


Merit

by MagicalStardust



Series: My HDM Works [4]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, i am writing this as catharsis, my lecturer has been horrific towards me, so i am shoving my pain onto young Marisa, some mild self harm, you're welcome?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29473995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalStardust/pseuds/MagicalStardust
Summary: Shortly after starting at Oxford, eighteen year-old Marisa learns that no matter how hard she tries, she will never get the marks she deserves.
Series: My HDM Works [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2164986
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11





	Merit

**Author's Note:**

> Context you need if you are not from the UK:  
> A first = a truly excellent grade  
> A 2:1 = a very good grade  
> A 2:2 = not a bad grade  
> A third = not a good grade  
> A fail = a fail
> 
> Hey people, what's up!  
> I've had a terrible day! Who doesn't love their lecturer humiliating them in class and having their beliefs that said lecturer has been giving lower marks than they should receive pretty-much confirmed!  
> So, I am writing this as catharsis :D  
> (Don't worry my experience with my lecturer hasn't been quite as horrific as Marisa's, I made her experience worse to make mine easier to deal with, also to suit her situation in her world)  
> I haven't read the prequels so obviously this may not be canon-compliant.  
> Enjoy!  
> 15/02/21

Marisa sat on her bed, staring blankly into the distance. 

Earlier she had been raging, emotions blurring through her, ripping her apart.

Now she just felt numb.

It was funny to think that she had felt so much, when now she just felt tired. Empty.

She felt Oz snuggling closer to her on the bed, he rested his hand on top of hers. She didn't care. She didn't have the energy to push him away. Normally she would have done so but now? Now she had wasted her energy with silent, anguished screams (because she could never, ever have anyone at St. Sophia's hearing her), and all that was left was a blank void.

Oz crawled into her lap. She let him. She even stroked his fur absentmindedly.

Unbidden, as it had done so many times over the last few hours, the scene thrust its way into her consciousness. She screwed up her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall.

She had been in a seminar, waiting for the scholar to hand back her first summative assessment. It had been a research paper into different scientific theories. Normally so in control of her emotions, she hadn't been able to hide the gleam of anticipation in her eye. She had done well, she _knew_ she had done well. She had put so much effort into this work, and, whatever disparaging and condescending looks the scholar might have given her in the past, now he would see, he would see what she was capable of.

He had reached her last, due to her preference of sitting in the back corner (she felt safer like that, it allowed her to see everyone), and had shoved her paper down on her desk with a sigh.

"Abysmal work, Miss Delamere, but I suppose I shouldn't have expected any better, should I?"

"What!?" the exclamation had flown out of her mouth without a second to consider that perhaps it wouldn't be prudent to address a scholar in this manner, then her eyes had caught the grade on the front of her essay. A third.

The young men in her class had snickered around her as she had stared up at the scholar's face in horror and incredulity.

"What is there to say?" the man had drawled. "Grammar mistakes, unsubstantiated arguments, it goes on..."

Marisa had hastily flicked through her paper, skimming through the sparse comments in the margins and the red corrections... no, make that correction, singular.

"What? I spelled one word wrong, and I didn't go into detail on Faucault's theories because you gave us a thousand words. _That?_ That gets me a third?" She had known it would be difficult here, she had known it, but, as her eyes had fixed incredulously on the scholar, she had realised that she had never expected it to be this bad.

The man had chucked, had made sure to smile indulgently at the grinning male students.

"Miss Delamere," he had said, his tone serious, his gaze mockingly paternalistic. "Such studies are hard for women. Those of the fairer sex, well, they simply do not have the capacities to follow this. If you're not willing to put a lot more effort in, well, you may as well leave now."

Marisa had clenched her jaw and had glared at the blackboard in the front of the room, telling herself that she couldn't hear the others whispering around her. About her.

She didn't know why, she was well practiced at bottling her emotions, shoving them right down inside her so no-one could touch them, not even her, but she had suddenly felt an overwhelming flood of emotion rise up inside of her. The urge to burst into tears, to scream and cry over the injustice and humiliation of it all had been nearly unbearable.

But she had borne it.

She had had to.

She couldn't have done otherwise. Not in front of all of those _people._ Those men who had a right to be there more than she ever would. No matter that she was sure she was more intelligent than any of them.

Her monkey hadn't been near enough to grab, and she certainly couldn't have done so there, not in front of all of those people, but she had been able to dig her nails into her wrists, her hands, her arms, the pain anchoring her, giving her something to focus on.

She knew how not to let her tears fall when she was in pain. She was excellent at it.

When the class had finished she had left with small bruises and angry red dents in her skin, and she had walked swiftly back to her room at St Sophia's. She hadn't allowed herself to speed up too much however, it would have been unacceptable to appear as if she were running away. She had glared at the world as she had walked, daring it to try to break her.

But when she had reached the relative safety of her own room and locked the door, she had collapsed to the floor. Her body aching from her tears, from supressing the noises that would have alerted anyone to the fact that she had been anything other than perfectly alright, she'd let out a strangled scream. Oz had tried to brush away the tears that had run down her face and dripped onto the stone floor. She'd hit him. He hadn't tried again.

After goodness knows how long, once the sky had started to take on a pale gold colour as the sun set, she had pulled herself up off the floor and onto her bed, staring numbly at the cracks on the ceiling. On autopilot she had taken large gulps of water from the jug on her bedside table, her brain uncaring of the dehydration her tears had caused but her body craving a liquid to replenish what it had lost.

_You're pathetic_ , she had told herself, _having hysterics for no reason, you're as weak as they say you are._

But somehow, through the haze of nothingness, the words hadn't seemed to have their usual bite.

So now, here she was, sitting on her bed with Oz in her arms.

Alone.

Alone in a world that was against her, one that always would be against her.

She would have to fight, fight tooth and nail and it still wouldn't be enough.

Well that was the way of the world, wasn't it?

**Author's Note:**

> So, I hope you guys enjoyed the angst.
> 
> Please do let me know how you found it in a comment, it would greatly cheer me up to hear your thoughts.
> 
> (umm, if anyone does know a way to prevent yourself from crying in front of your lecturer and classmates other than harshly digging your fingernails into your arms, then that would be greatly appreciated. The vast majority of Marisa's experience here was only inspired by, rather than based on, what happened today/a few weeks ago, but that, uh, the self-harm part was actually based on my experiences).
> 
> (P.s. if you've seen any mistakes, do let me know, I have been writing this in an emotional haze so I doubt my grammar is as good as usual)


End file.
